Thursday, May 08, 2008

Why We Need to Waterboard Terrorists

A great case for waterboarding terrorists was recently made by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). He spoke during a hearing on “Guantanamo Bay and America's Image” a couple days ago. It’s sad that this is a hotly debated issue in the post-9/11 world. I didn’t know much at all about Rohrabacher before I read his words, but he quickly impresses by talking sense about an issue that has become over-politicized at the expense of our national security.

Rohrabacher:

I have no apologies that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who planned the 9/11 attack, the number three man to Osama bin Laden, was waterboarded.

After he was waterboarded, the report is -- and by the way, waterboarding, as we know, has been used three times, at least reportedly; that's what we understand. One was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The other was the man who was responsible for publicly videotaping the beheading of an American journalist. And I'm not sure what the other man who was waterboarded was guilty of.

But the fact is that information from this waterboarding, which is nothing more than creating a psychological sense of fear, and overwhelming fear -- we got a lot of information. And perhaps from that, from this Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who gave us a tremendous amount of information, we were able to do something that actually stopped another event of the magnitude of 9/11 -- or maybe two or three of them, or maybe the fact that Ramsey Yusef, who was part of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family, was targeting Disneyland in Orange County, where I come from, perhaps when we found his laptop in the Philippines, which lists targets that they meant to kill tens of thousands of people going to Disneyland. This is the type of people we are up against. I have no apologies that we waterboarded three of those people. And that has been turned into, internationally, a horror story. My gosh, we use this kind of psychological pressure on these types of mass murderers. I've got no apologies for that at all.

And Rohrabacher addresses the so-called “human rights” argument of lawyers and leftists trying to gain the release of Gitmo terrorists:

I personally do not believe that a human rights analysis should be based on how you treat a terrorist who has murdered lots of other people, and you're trying to get information from him. But instead, human rights concerns are what you are trying to do to make sure that innocent people are not injured in your attempts to get at people who are terrorists. I've gotten information from the Intelligence Committee, which indicates that over 30 former Gitmo detainees, who were detained but have been released -- over 30 of them ended up going back into some sort of radical and/or violent activity.

And there are some examples here, which I will put in for the record, of individuals who went back and killed other people, after being released from Gitmo. And there are examples here, for example, of people who repeatedly told their interrogators at Gitmo that they were not involved in the Taliban or in the Al Qaida operations that were going on in Afghanistan, and that they claimed to have been farmers or truck drivers or cooks, or had gone to Afghanistan looking for a wife or to study the Koran, or any number of excuses they had. Of those, 30 ended up going back and participating in activity that threatened the lives -- if not took the lives -- of individuals, like the one I just mentioned, that was just reported today, of one who was released and was then involved in a bombing in Iraq, which caused the death of seven people.

So when we're talking about this issue, we have to realize that if indeed people are being lied to -- and we are dealing with terrorists -- they will go out and kill other people. So other people's lives are at stake.

Rohrabacher was referencing al-Ajmi, a former detainee who unfortunately was released and recently became a suicide bomber and killed 7 people. Would the Democrats & leftists have us believe those other 30 or so former detainees were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and the victims of bounty hunters? Would the Democrats even think of making these absurd arguments if a Democrat was in the White House? Do you suppose they would be far more supportive of Gitmo under a Democratic administration?

It’s doubtful the anti-waterboarding and anti-Gitmo crowd will heed these words, because in their minds, Gitmo equals Bush, and Bush represents the opposing political party, and this is all about politics, and not what’s best for our country or the world.